Blog Post

Google AMP is where it’s at! But what is Google AMP?

Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is Google’s new way of delivering content to mobile users quickly with the goal of giving them a great online mobile experience. It’s brand new, I’m just learning about it but I think it’s about to become extremely important because I’m hearing about it everywhere. Pretty soon it’ll be on Jeopardy, and a robot named Watson will be the first to buzz in, because it’s JUST THAT NEW.

What does Google AMP do?

You know as well as I do that waiting for a page to load on your mobile device is probably the most annoying thing on planet earth, so Google decided to fix it and they’ve been developing AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages. Basically, it’s a new infrastructure for the internet, designed specifically for mobile, to create a better and faster experience for your users.

Why should anyone care about Google AMP?

You might be thinking “why should I care about this?” I designed my website to be responsive so my users will a great experience on mobile. What’s the difference?

The difference is that AMP will only pull certain parts of data from your webpages and present the whole package to the end user seamlessly. AMP is trying to get rid of the super annoying popups and alerts that prevent us from being able to actually read the recipe we found on pinterest. Sound familiar? Yeah. Not only that it’s just way less clunky.

What do AMP pages look like?

You may have already seen AMP optimization on websites without realizing it. In fact, if you’re reading this on your phone you’re probably reading the AMP version. If you look at it on your desktop, it will appear just as I have designed my WordPress website. Media companies that push out a lot of news articles every day are already all over AMP. Articles appear in a list from the home page and there are plugins that you can use to configure the key design elements like colour or logo. AMP pages are very stripped down, they pull a feature image and text, and don’t include a bunch of extra flowery stuff.

But that’s not to say that your WHOLE website needs to be AMP optimized. In fact you might just want to optimize your landing pages or your top-performing blog posts to start, which can then lead your users to a signup page.

So, how do you set up AMP on your website?

There is a WordPress plugin I’ve started using called AMPforWP. It’s a very simple setup and configuration, and the changes appear instantly on your mobile device. Check it out and see what you think! And then tell me what you think because I’m interested to hear how other people are using AMP and what their experiences are.

At the end of the day, you need to start getting your website optimized for AMP because the experience will encourage people to stay on your site longer while on a mobile device. Online commerce sites should definitely get AMP optimized as soon as possible, since more and more people are using mobile for online shopping. Plus, if you start using AMP now you can have more control over what your website looks like on mobile in the future, just by being familiar with it from the get-go.

That’s it! If you like the show, rate review and subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, wherever you get your shows! I’m on Facebook at facebook.com/ultimatewordpressdesigner and i’m on twitter at emilymilling. For more stuff on websites and content marketing, check out my knowledge base atwww.ultimatewordpressdesigner.com